TIFF ’24: Claes Bang is “William Tell”

By Abe Friedtanzer

The legend of William (or Wilhelm, in German) Tell describes a man who helped to liberate Switzerland from Austrian occupation in the early 1300s. Whether he was real or not is immaterial to the fame his legacy has achieved throughout history, and he’s become the subject of many stories, including the 1804 play William Tell by Friedrich Schiller. That serves as the inspiration for writer-director Nick Hamm’s action epic of the same name, making its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival…

Click to read more ...

Review: Extraction

by Tony Ruggio

Chris Hemsworth, good actor and better action hero that he is, has had a helluva time finding material worth his salt outside of Marvel. Directed by first-time feature filmmaker Sam Hargrove and produced by the Russo brothers, it’s a rough-and-tumble action film set mostly in the slums of Bangladesh. His name is Tyler Rake and he’s a mercenary with a troubled past, hired to whisk and wend his way out of dangerous slums with a drug lord’s kidnapped son intact. Where have we seen this before?

Well, never mind the plot, silly and often pedestrian, and focus instead on the action. It's visceral and often well-choreographed... 

Click to read more ...

Cannes 2018. The First Films Announced!

by Nathaniel R

Best Actress possibility? Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani (About Elly, Paterson) and French star Emmanuelle Bercot headline the cast of "Girls of the Sun" about a Kurdish female battalion and the journalist embedded in their ranks

The initial Cannes lineups have arrived with films from their semi-typical list of famous international auteurs. Cannes has had problems leaning into super-male lineups (even when hugely acclaimed female directors are available) so it's worth noting that three of the first seventeen films announced in competition are from female filmmakers: Lebanon's Nadine Labaki, Italy's Alice Rohrwacher, and France's Eva Husson.

Which films are you most excited about? We've got the titles as well as a few details we could find about them after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Tweetweek: Spinster Bette, Jazzy La La Land, and gallows humor for our new reality

My personal esthetic this week is "glamorous spinster Bette Davis when she's too exhausted to slap anybody." pic.twitter.com/BcWjk2Ph6g

— The Nitrate Diva (@NitrateDiva) January 13, 2017

More tweets after the jump including Jesse Bradford, La La Land, Black Panther, Meryl Streep and gallows humor to get us through this horrific new America ...

Click to read more ...

The Furniture: A Last-Minute FYC for the Home Décor of "Paterson" and "Jackie"

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber...

Oscar balloting has begun! As Nathaniel explained last week, AMPAS branches have received their nomination ballots. They’re due on the 13th. The Academy’s production designers occasionally make offbeat choices, though they don’t do it as often as the costume designers or the makeup artists. So here’s a final nudge on behalf of the best work of the year.

I’ve already written about three of the five movies I’d nominate, were I in charge. The crazed fandom of the apartment in Florence Foster Jenkins is a work of precision and inspiration. So is the heavily curtained metaphor that is the mansion in The Childhood of a Leader. The hotel in The Lobster, meanwhile, is as perfectly sterile as the above settings are feverish. All three would be a thrilling surprise on nomination morning.

My other two have become less present in the awards conversation than I’d guessed...

Click to read more ...